Give Me My Stuff Back! How to Recover Your Data (Mostly) Free and Easy

Posted 01/21/2011 at 2:39pm | by Brian Mahoney

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Accidentally hit that delete button? Having a hard drive failure? Help is here. Let us take you through the step to get that data back in your hands.

Data recovery software doesn’t have quite the same flash as anti-virus software. While new computers generally come bundled with some type of A/V application, there isn’t nearly as much attention paid to recovering lost data. Microsoft jumped into the AV fray by providing users with Windows Defender but they seem curiously absent when it comes to data recovery. Sure, there’s Recovery Console but that’s not much help when Windows itself can’t read from the drive in question. When you lose data, it’s a technology emergency – without any ability to dial 911. Let us be the calm-voiced 911 operator walking you through the steps you need to recover your data.

What seems to be the Trouble here?

If you’ve deleted a file or formatted a drive and you want to retrieve some or all of the data, jump ahead to the “Now Infamous Software” section which details software that will help and consider yourself lucky. You have a drive that is still functioning and your computer knows it’s there. But, and this is vital, make sure you STOP using the drive immediately. Eject it, unhook it, power it down…whatever it takes to make sure your operating system doesn’t write tothe drive. If you don’t do this right away, your data will be much harder or impossible to get back.

If you've mutilated, mashed, dropped, or drop-kicked your drive and it’s making nasty sounds, then your best bet is to move directly to professional data recovery. Unless you’re a super guru, there isn’t anything you can do yourself.

Although it’s an infrequent occurrence, some drives just give up the ghost, through no fault of your own.  If your hard drive is dead- no sound and no vibrations at all- check out our tips about electrical failures. We’ve got a trick or two that you’ll want to try before you start shelling out greenbacks for professional help.

If there doesn’t seem to be any physical problem with the drive, then you have two paths to choose. If your computer sees the drive but doesn’t recognize it as a functioning unit, it could mean that the file system has been corrupted. The whole drive might be askew or it might simply be the File Allocation Table that’s somehow gotten a bit sideways. As long as there is activity in the drive, that would be some vibration and some normal spinning noises, you’ll most likely be able to retrieve your data.

However, if you have a RAID setup and it isn’t recognized, or if you have more than one partition on a drive and your OS can’t see them all then you’re in a bit deeper. Start with the now "Infamous Software” suggestions to see if anything there can help.

Anything to do with RAID is reasonably complicated so it goes to figure that a RAID failure is equally as complicated; basically, don’t have unrealistic expectations of a free software application solving all of your RAID woes. Keep in mind, your RAID problem might be your hardware controller. (While we’ll mention RAID with each piece of software in this article, we’re dealing primarily with single drives here.)

A Quick Side-Note On Flash Drives and Alternate OS’es.

The bulk of this article applies to hard disk drives, not SSDs. The data recovery programs we describe here work pretty much the same on flash drives, SSDs and even floppies– the only difference being the mechanical/electrical problems. The beauty of SSDs is that they have no moving parts, making them far less susceptible to bumps and knocks than traditional hard drives. Additionally, we are concentrating on Windows, so if you’re using  Linux, the physical problems are cross-platform however the software solutions are often not. Not to worry: we’ll let you know what works with your OS and what doesn’t. 

Are You Sure? – The Mis-Click

Before you format a drive or delete a file, your OS will try to determine if you realize what you’re about to do. In spite of this, sometimes we make mistakes. Fatigue, confusion, stress can add up to a thoughtless mouse click and suddenly your blood runs cold.

For some of those moments, your operating systems’ failsafe, aka the trash bin/recycling bin, will be your saving grace. If you’ve accidentally deleted a file, check the trash bin first before you run off screaming. If it’s not there, try the free/cheap solutions listed in the now "Infamous Software” section

We said it earlier, but it’s important enough to bear repeating: whatever you do, as soon as you realize something is amiss, stop using the drive. Once more: Stop. Using. The. Drive. Why? Well, your operating system writes data to your hard drive almost constantly, even if you aren’t saving files or processing any work. When a file is deleted, it’s still on the drive in a kind of limbo state. The markers telling the filesystem that the data there is a part of a specific file have been removed, so your operating system simply doesn’t see it anymore. Since your OS considers the space that the file took up as essentially open space, it will write over it at some point if you continue to use the drive in question. Once a file has been overwritten, it’s virtually impossible to recover.

A Quick Side Note on Spare Drives:

Although it seems obvious, we’ll say it anyway: don’t try to recover files to the same drive that you’re trying to repair. That’s like cutting off a tree branch that you’re sitting on. If it’s a flash drive, use your computer’s hard drive to save the files. If it’s an external drive in question, make sure that you have sufficient room on another drive to cover the quantity of data that you’re recovering. And make sure that you aren’t running your computer from the same drive that you’re trying to repair. That just won’t work people! What will: either run the recovery software from an optical disk or flash drive, or take the OS drive out of the computer and put it into an external setup and retrieve the data from it.

The In-Famous Software Section

The Big Easy – Recovering recently deleted files from a photo flash drive

Flash drive and cards are everywhere; in your cell phone, your digital camera and maybe your camcorder. Recovering files from these units is as easy as downloading some free software, installing it, and running it.

What kind of free software, you ask? Let’s start with Piriform’s Recuva, which has saved our bacon many times. And by bacon, we mean, data. Aside from being free, it’s also simple and quick. Install it, open it and tell it which drive you want it to scan. Recuva will do the rest, including recovery of the original filename if there is enough of that information left.

On the left side of the GUI, you’ll see the filename, the path to it, when it was last modified, its size and whether the file can be recovered. Green, orange and red buttons next to the file name are a visual aid to quickly let you know what your recovery chances are for the file. If you’re lucky, you might be able to preview photo files on the right side.

Recuva will work with hard drives, flash drives, camera cards and MP3 players, but only on a Windows computer. It also works well with Outlook Express, Thunderbird and Windows Live Mail.

If you’ve formatted a drive, Recuva will find whatever files it can. If Word has crashed, sic Recuva on to the drive and you’ll be back typing the next great novel in no time at all. Recuva has two settings; the Deep Scan takes longer than the normal scan but should be able to recover more data. There’s even a portable version of Recuva that you can take with you on a removable drive, however, it doesn’t play well with RAID. 

We used Recuva on a 4 gig flash drive that had been used for data transfer between computers for over two years. Recuva was able to find and recover hundreds of files that other free programs, (specifically DiskDigger Data Recovery Wizard),were unable able to find at all. On a deep scan, DiskDigger found a few more files but due to the limitations of the program, only one gig of data could be retrieved for free. While Data Recovery Wizard also has the same one gigabyte limitation, Recuva has no such limitation. As long as Recuva is around, we’re wondering why anyone would go anywhere else for data recovery.